From Elsewhere: More evidence from the FBI about the myth of Islamophobic attacks

December 3, 2013

Very useful article published over at Islamist Watch showing that the much touted tsunami of anti-Islamic attacks and ‘Islamophobia’ is complete and utter baloney. I’ve no reason to believe that the figures for anti-Islamic attacks carried out in Britain would be much more different from the American figures, taking into account population number differences.

This FBI report, should give groups like Tell Mama food for thought. No matter how much groups like the American Hamas-linked Islamic group the Council for American Islamic Relations and those like Tell Mama who suck up to them try to spin this, the facts on the ground are that a Muslim in the UK or US is liable to be at considerably less risk of attack than would be a Christian living in an Islamic country.

“The FBI’s newly released hate crime statistics covering 2012 have once again thrown cold water on the tirednarrative that American Muslims find themselves under siege from increasingly violent “Islamophobes.” The 2012 numbers reinforce the conclusion drawn by Islamist Watch’s previousanalysis of post-9/11 (2002–11) FBI data: Muslims endure fewer hate crimes per capita than other prominent minorities. A closer look at thedetails:

FBI-tabulated incidents of anti-Islamic hate crime fell from 157 in 2011 to 130 in 2012, a decrease of 17.2 percent. Incidents of hate crime spanning all victim groups dropped by only 6.8 percent, 6,222 to 5,796.

An estimated Muslim population of 2.85 million, based on Pew’s 2011 value and annual growth of 100,000, yields 4.6 anti-Islamic incidents per 100,000 Muslims in 2012, lower than the average rate of 6.0 per 100,000 for the prior decade. In comparison, the 674 anti-Jewish incidents among approximately 6.5 million Jews imply a rate of 10.4 per 100,000 in 2012, more than twice the Muslim figure. Homosexuals and bisexuals (1,111 incidents) experienced a per capita rate similar to that of Jews, while blacks (1,805 incidents) were targeted about as often as Muslims. This is in line with the 2002–11 results.

Critics correctly note the poor quality of the 2012 report. Only 13,022 local agencies, representing 248,809,710 Americans, submitted data to the FBI in 2012, decreases of 10.7 and 13.0 percent, respectively, from 2011. Incompleteness issues likely contributed to the broad dip in FBI-collected hate crimes, but the fall in anti-Islamic incidents, 17.2 percent, was large enough that at least part of it should be real.

Two lost their lives in anti-Islamic hate crimes last year, the first such fatalities to be recorded by the FBI. Ten people were killed in all classes of hate crime in 2012 and 74 from 2002 to 2011. The FBI tables contain insufficient information to identify precisely the anti-Islamic incidents that led to deaths, but one of the deceased may be Sunando Sen, a Hindu man pushed from a New York City subway platform by a mentally disturbed woman who later told police that she had believed him to be Muslim. Further investigation is required. It is clear which 2012 slayings the FBI wisely did not label as anti-Islamic: the murder of California Muslim Shaima Alawadi, which had been touted as a hate crime before her husband was charged, and the slaughter of six Sikhs at a Wisconsin temple, which some had triedtoblame on misdirected “Islamophobia.”

Muslims are not uniquely victimized by hate crimes in the U.S., a fact that no amount of spin can erase. To most Americans, evidence of relatively low and gradually declining frequencies of bias crime is welcome news. However, it is a disaster for Islamists, who wish to employ hate crimes against Muslims as weapons to smear and silence opponents of jihad.”